


anneal

by TheFreakWithTheWings



Series: Word a Day [26]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-16
Packaged: 2019-10-29 09:26:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17805410
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheFreakWithTheWings/pseuds/TheFreakWithTheWings
Summary: anneal: to make (something, such as steel or glass) less brittle by heating and then coolingAfter she left the Jedi Order, Ahsoka was adrift.





	anneal

After she left the Jedi Order, Ahsoka was adrift. She had left all that she knew, all that was familiar, and pretty much the only applicable skills she had were her ability to use the Force and her fighting abilities. All of that added up to a mercenary life if she knew anything about mercenaries. As Ahsoka had met a number of mercenaries over the course of the Clone War, she was a little uncomfortable with that assessment.

The first thing she did, though, was mercenary work.

Ahsoka needed to get off of Coruscant. She could feel the Jedi in the Force, feel Skyguy and Master Obi-Wan and Master Plo and all of her other friends and allies. It was a comfort to know they were alive, but it was also slowly killing her. Of all the Jedi in the Order that she knew, that had seemed fond of her, only _one_ had even tried to fight for her when she was accused of murder and terrorism, and then they'd just asked her to come back as if nothing had even happened.

Her trust had been shattered, and the growing anger that she felt for those Jedi was dangerous. If she Fell, then they would kill her, so she needed to remove herself from the source of her anger.

As she had no money and few connections that didn't rely on the Jedi, Ahsoka had approached a ship, trusting the Force to steer her true, and been hired as protection detail. It was only after she had settled in that she discovered the ship was heading to the Outer Rim, a trip that would take quite some time. No one would tell her _where_ on the Outer Rim they were going, which was pretty suspicious.

Never one to let a mystery go unsolved, Ahsoka began to chat with the passengers and crew, intending to get at least a little information from them.

The first person she approached was a very muscular Twi'lek who at least didn't seem frightened of her. Maybe she hadn't seen the news about Ahsoka being suspected of bombing the Jedi Temple. She initiated the conversation by asking about the food, but it quickly moved on to, of all things, swords. Apparently the Twi'lek woman was something of a swordsmith, even she did more work on knives and daggers lately. The other woman was very curious about lightsaber construction and listened carefully as Ahsoka described what she could about them, omitting anything that she thought fell under the nebulous distinction of 'Jedi secret.' It wasn't much use to the woman, as the Force was a necessary part of a lightsaber's creation.

In turn, the woman told her a little about how she made swords and why. After Ahsoka returned to her bunk for the night, she continued to think on the conversation. The part on annealing, how it was a process that strengthened a sword by heating and then cooling, stood out.

Was the Clone War the beginning of an annealing process for the Jedi Order, the heating step?

And would they manage to survive the cooling, the end of the war? Ahsoka wasn’t so young that she couldn’t remember a time before the Clone War, but she knew that the Jedi had been changed greatly by taking up command of the army. The Order was different now, changed enough to throw a Padawan to the wolves without proper evidence.

Either the Jedi would change again, or the rest of the galaxy would have to find a way to accommodate them, and Ahsoka had a dark feeling that the rest of the galaxy would not give first.


End file.
